Reheated-coffee-reading.

Glad you found us!

I don't ski, I don't drink craft beer and I don't have a dog, but by golly I am a real Colorado native girl. So now you can still believe in unicorns! Here's my ode to motherhood, you know because all of us bloggers write like we were the first, only and last mama out there.

May 24 Mother's Day in NYC!

After five years of marriage, being together for nine, and two babies, you would THINK he and I would know how to get along already, BUT...we still quibble and squabble. I've slept nights in the guest room downstairs and he's stormed out and gone to do errands without telling me when he'd be back. Worse, we have BOTH neglected each other and have taken each other for granted. All WE do to make this family tick, we become selfish and only see ourselves working and forget what the other does to hold up the other end. Out of our tiredness, our stress, our frustrations of two fighting, overly tired babies not sharing and pestering each other to the point of tears, rather than tag the other one out, we take it out on each other.
Mother's Day was a couple weekends ago, and husband tagged me out for a weekend. You may have seen my #overgramming on my Instagram account. I won't apologize. I don't care! I wanted to SHARE my happiness! That acknowledgement and appreciation and GIFT of sending me to a place I LOVE, was LOVE. I had an incredible trip from start to end. I didn't want it to end! A sign of a perfect trip! I traveled ALONE, for the first time since before I was married. I talked to strangers at neighboring tables at meals, I walked in the rain, I stayed out late, I ate hot meals and sipped as many HOT coffees as I wanted. I walked. I danced! Really. I took a ballet class at Martha Graham! And walked. I saw art! The new Whitney Museum is incredible! I saw a show. I listened to jazz at a club. I let the city streets take me and I didn't have an agenda or schedule. There were no babies to feed, milk to warm, cartoons to turn on, naps to be had, diapers or potty trips...just me. It was what I needed. My body, my mind, my soul.

I have been mothering with every ounce of me that I literally depleted my reserves and borrowed from all other parts of me that I was beginning to show my shabbiness. It wasn't so much the messy top knot I wore when he got home at night, or the unpolished toe nails, but the crying, shrieking tense irrational hot mess. Marriage can get shuffled around, stepped on and misplaced when you are in the throws of raising tiny humans. Losing self. My self has been on a shelf. When your partner SEES this, that your self needs dusting and maybe to be moved to a different spot that catches more sparkle from the sun, well, then that's when you know all the squabbles, okay let's be real, the sailor mouth spats, are worth figuring out. It doesn't have to be a trip to New York, but when your partner makes you go to a place that makes you happy simply to MAKE YOU HAPPY, because when you're happy THEY ARE HAPPY, you hold on to them. And then what? Reciprocate. Balance. Be better.

I am so thankful for the opportunity I had to visit a place I could have lived in another lifetime, and I am very blessed and thankful to have a life partner who took me there. Who takes me there. He takes me to New York everyday! That same happy place can be found right here at home. The same giddiness I got from wandering the West Village was today when I was lying on a blanket with my girls in the front yard, eating popcorn in the sunshine. The same heart pang I got in New York when I saw toddlers scooting along sidewalks, came tonight watching husband put together a cart for the porch and my two girls were handing him screws and tearing up the packaging all around him.

Thank you husband for moving me. For making me sparkle. Let's make each other sparkle more.